Dawn
by Amethyst Soul
Summary: *Dedicated to Idgiebay* After Zim leaves, Dib realizes he must pursue him into space- but nothing is as it seems. These are his last thoughts before he leaves all that he knows behind, to follow his first and last true enemy.


Dawn  
  
/For Idgiebay/  
  
Dawn.  
  
This moment now was the last moment of dawn that I would have in a very long time. Maybe that time would be infinite- but that was neither for me to know or decide.  
  
I sit here, gazing above to the sky. The sun reaches out like a hand dipping into a pond, sending out ripples of radiant light to stain the rest of the sky. Like oil, poisoning an ocean, vibrant color disperses through the atmosphere. To think vile smog and dirt brought such beauty. I suppose even a stunning picture hides an ugly canvas.  
  
An inch of golden light peeks above the mountains off in the distance. It takes small steps, first touching off the peak and then pouring out onto the outer-city like a stream.  
  
/Morning time,  
  
Now…  
  
Time..  
  
Morning time,  
  
I sit and watch the sun arise,  
  
And everything seems so different now,  
  
Than it was just before./  
  
It's morning- it's supposed to be cold- and yet, I don't feel a thing. Not physically, anyway. There's enough feeling within me- too much, I suppose. So much that it bars any other feeling.  
  
It has to be five or five thirty. I can tell, because the strange old woman that walks her dog every morning is leaving her house, the leash in hand, her fuzzy little friend strolling gallantly down the walk. And the people with their own lives, and their own jobs, and their own families stir in their beds, preparing to leave off for work, ready for another day.  
  
Another day. That's just what this is. The sun will rise and fall as it has since the dawn of time. But I breathe in, and the oxygen has an air of significance. I breathe out, and the feeling has not left. Perhaps even nature is tacitly aware of what is different.  
  
The sun reaches the corner of my street- a red warning that it is coming to reveal its light again. Light, enemy of the darkness that shields one's soul. Light, the most valuable probing tool mankind has every seen. Light, the carrier of time.  
  
Time now flies like a bird in a thermal. It is propelled forward, and nothing could get in its way. I begged that time break its wings, for once, and slow this scene before me. Slow the flight of the light- the light, ready to reveal this half of Earth once again.  
  
Time momentarily swoops away from the thermal and drifts, pausing mid- air in the sky. Likewise, the light now steadily slithers forward, reaching the edge of the very roof that I'm sitting on. I know not to slink back, because nothing I can do will ever stop it from reaching me.  
  
/Dawning sun,  
  
As you go down my soul will run  
  
I feel it all slip away  
  
Slip out of my hands  
  
I realize as I see  
  
All the people holding tight,  
  
As I leave the world tonight,  
  
Meeting the light./  
  
A soft breeze blows, and I brush a hand through my coarse hair, breathing deeply. I take in the scene before me: more and more people are stirring, not even realizing that I sit on this roof, watching them. I know that they will continue their lives as naive as I continued mine... that is, until a single, solitary figure changed my life.  
  
The figure- the reason why I sit on this roof now. Why I'm close to tears, but I also why I can't let them spill over. Emotion will break me down. Emotion will tear at my insides, forcing me to stay. Any emotion inside of me must be as cold and numb as the feelings outside.  
  
There's a clicking sound I hear from below, and I glance down to see my father strolling steadily down the walk toward his car. His goggles are off, and his pure white lab coat is wrinkled and tilted, but beyond that I can't see any definite features other than the spike of black hair that stands atop his forehead.  
  
He gets inside of his car, never glancing around once to see if anyone were watching him. Even if that eerie, indescribable feeling came to him, I don't think he would notice. He sits in the car for a few minutes, sitting in the blue darkness, waiting for something. Staring faintly towards the sky.  
  
The sun is now gradually rising, the tips showering the car and all that surrounds it in light.  
  
The light for a moment captures the features of his face, and the things that I've missed for so long are all there, in the lines and creases of his complexion- pain, exhaustion, grief, torment. He knows he's making a sacrifice- working so hard, listing his priorities to please anyone but himself, spending sleepless nights worrying- but he doesn't say a word. I realize sullenly that all this time I've been neglecting /him/ as much as he's been neglecting /me/. But now he won't have to worry about that anymore. A roaring sound brings me back to the present and I see him starting up the car, the transfixed expression gone and replaced with stern assurance. As suddenly as he had sat motionless, he leaves, driving off towards the sun until it hurts my eyes to keep looking.  
  
He's going to be fine.  
  
/I realize as I see  
  
All the people holding tight,  
  
As I leave the world tonight,  
  
Meeting the light.  
  
Morning time,  
  
I sit here looking all around,  
  
And everything seems so colourful,  
  
And life's a miracle./  
  
Now I'm warm, and the feeling penetrates my skin into my insides. I smile for a moment, raising my head towards the sky with closed eyes and taking in everything I can't see. I wonder briefly why I didn't do this when I had the chance- every other day in my life I could have woken up early, sat on the roof, and taken in this indescribable, brief moment; as far from perfect depiction by a writer's pen as an artist's paintbrush. But deep inside, I know why- because I never had as urgent a reason before now.  
  
I glance across town to the rubble of where a green house once lay. It reminded me how I had struggled for so long in the darkness, when a pinpoint of light in the form of a green alien directed me. It could have been any direction- I didn't care- the important fact was that it was a direction. And now that I've lost sight of the light, I must to pursue it once more, before it becomes out of my reach and I'm lost again.  
  
I lean back on the roof, watching the sun. It gracefully sweeps over me and proceeds to drown the rest of the little town with its light. I feel penetrated, but I also feel free. Like I have wings, and could fly. Encased in its light, on display for the world to see. I feel... an emotion that no one could possibly describe to another. An emotion completely my own. An emotion gripping my insides like a sinner's guilt, but brings no pleasure, nor pain. Just... feeling.  
  
Feeling- I was alive. Feeling- I was free. Feeling- I was here. In this moment, I am everything I've worked to become in all of these years, and more. My eyes- blazing, bright, gleaming- turn towards the sun. A sun now tainted in its own pink and purples of a golden speckled sky.  
  
/Dawning sun,  
  
I hear in the wind your sweet hum,  
  
I feel it all slip away,  
  
Slip out of my hands,  
  
I realize as I see…  
  
Morning time./  
  
I wasn't afraid anymore. I wasn't afraid to face the world, and I certainly wasn't afraid to face /him/. He knew I would pursue him when he left- he just didn't know how soon. It shouldn't surprise anyone that I would chase my enemy, whom I considered in some odd way, my brother. We were two lifelines that seemed indefinitely split, but somehow, through galaxies of space, found a way to intertwine together again. Intertwine in a double helix around a cylinder rivalry, maybe, but intertwined just the same.  
  
The sky broke darkness and was encased entirely in light. Visible breath escaped my lips, and the distant winds brushing through the trees ushered me on. Now was the time for me to leave.  
  
I stand, and glance once more at all that is before me as it catches a single minute of complete golden radiance. Soon, the sky would turn light blue and life would become ordinary: the hustle and bustle of people getting to work, the groan of kids getting ready for school, the bells of shops ringing as customers entered. But this moment, this moment was all my own. This was the life that I am about to leave behind. Trading familiarity for a new endeavour.  
  
A sigh, a smile, a single tear.  
  
All that I can't help but leave behind. I turn to scrutinize a looming, dark black piece of machinery. So conspicuous on top of the roof, and still the neighbours have yet to notice it. I had spent hours building it. Hours of time that seemed at first to be wasted- that is, until I was given the mission to chase him. It was a ship, far beyond its time. A ship that I wouldn't have been able to create without stealing a few parts- among those the entire plans- from him. Upon entering the ship, I sit at the helm for a moment just as my father had, staring forward into the break of time against the sky. And then I gripped the steering handle and lifted off. The tiny ship sped off into the air with a rumble that would have surely shaken the entire house, and waken Gaz up. Gaz... I have to leave her behind without a goodbye. She wouldn't cry, of course but... but sometimes, I think she hides a lot more emotion than she'd like to let on. She, like dad, would be all right.  
  
I look back, even though I'm not supposed to. Look back towards the light as I head off towards darkness. Trading a life filled with satiated radiance for a void filled with empty darkness. I look back until I can look back no more.  
  
  
  
******************  
  
  
  
Voices, faraway, could be heard. Two figures stand over the body of a broken and beaten one. One figure, whose outline revealed a female with shoulder-length, violet hair, speaks first.  
  
"They're going to lose him."  
  
The other figure, clothed in white and having equally pale skin, whispers, "I know."  
  
She hesitates, then speaks again, this time not to the other figure beside her, but the incapacitated figure before her. "God, Dib... you were so stupid. Why did you have to keep fighting? He... he's gone, too, I think you knew before you went out yourself. You were pretty strong, you know that?" Her hand reaches out and touches the pale face of the boy lying before her, lightly, so as not to break the already battered face. "You were strong and he... he was strong, too. You two couldn't just help from balancing each other out, could you?"  
  
A window to the far side of the room suddenly brightens as the sun pokes a curious ray through. The outside, dark with thick, anvil-head clouds and navy-colored sky, receives a taste of this light and turns bright purple in surprise.  
  
There is a long silence. The figure in white brushes his hand through the black spike of hair on his head. Then a dark, gloved hand points to a screen, displaying a smooth rise and fall of green lines accompanied by a peaceful, rhythmic beat. "He's dreaming."  
  
The girl glances toward the screen and then back at the boy. "He's always been a dreamer."  
  
The light more boldly thrust itself through the window, reaching the edge of the bed and then proceeds to crawl upwards until it finally rests on the boy lying in it. The sky outside now, though riddled with dark clouds, meets the perfect juxtaposition: daylight, in the brightest illumination possible. The light hits the girl's eyes; within them reveal a sense of pain as its penetrating rays encase her, but she does not seem to mind. Her eyes move from the world outside the window to the shattered body before her- the shattered, but content, frail body. Two entities, seeming dark and without hope: his body, the clouds. Two entities, donned with the light of the dawn.  
  
An infinite silence has continued through the moment of light's pursuit, for there are no words. There are no words, even when the screen displays a thin, straight line accompanied by a monotonous tone- a tone that stabs the heart of its listeners but does not surprise them.  
  
The figure on the bed keeps his eyes closed and his lips pursed- his trademark expression of concentration. In his mind, he has simply left home to pursue his adversary. In his mind, it's just another morning. In his mind, he journeys towards the eternal vanishing point of space, with his last dawn behind him, and his unavoidable future in front.  
  
/It's morning time  
  
Dawning sun,  
  
You will run away.  
  
I feel it all slip away,  
  
Slip out of my hands.  
  
I realize as I see…/  
  
  
  
'Morning Time' lyrics copyright Eiffel 65.  
  
'Invader Zim' copyright Jhonen Vasquez.  
  
Special thanks to Opalescent Tear, Guardian Diesel, and Bobomaniac for beta- reading this and inspiring me always to do more.  
  
A loss does not always constitute defeat.  
  
There is always another dawn waiting,  
  
Even when your own dawn has descended to an eternal night.  
  
Look forward. Face the morning head-on.  
  
You'll never lose sight of the light. 


End file.
